


error on line one

by orphan_account



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Cyberpunk, Alternate Universe - Future, Character Death, M/M, Present Tense, Stream of Consciousness, Torture, i don't write fanfic, send hapl
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2012-09-11
Updated: 2012-09-17
Packaged: 2017-11-14 00:37:50
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death, Underage
Chapters: 4
Words: 2,876
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/509465
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Derek Hale is a cybernetically enhanced human that's been on the run from the Argents, a Red Team who killed his family in cold blood. He's vying to avenge them-- specifically, his sister, whose death was both the most recent, and the most brutal.</p><p>Stiles Stilinksi is a teenaged Blackhat who has been making a name for himself in the virtual reality of the Network. His methodology for boosting his renown? Gladiatorial style hacking, crowds and all. </p><p> Their paths collide.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. i & ii

**Author's Note:**

  * For [liz](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=liz).



> dedicated to liz, who fuels all these fucking feels. (If you read this Jenn, I'm sorry for what I've done :l)

**i.**

The year is 2146, and Derek Hale is on the run.

He never asked to be a _wolf_ : to be an anomaly in the system, danger snapping at his heels in an infinite loop. To be a creature fueled by instincts, ones so strong that they take over at any threat to his safety-- the instincts that make him stronger than any _normal_ human being could ever train to be. Derek can run faster for longer, see further in darkness, can lift more without tiring, can hear heartbeats from a half mile away, can take bullets and keep going and _going and **going**_ \--

' _It's a gift,_ ' Derek's mother told him once, years before the fire, ' _never a curse_.'

It's hard to believe that when Derek's heart is thudding in his throat and he's hardly able to swallow around it. His canines are elongated with sleek, sharp edges comprised of matter other than the organic, and eyes glowing an inhumane and incandescent blue, LEDs lighting up within his irises. It's hard to believe anything at all when his senses have gone into overdrive, because the need to survive has come alive in his veins, humming like a generator, overpowering his teenaged instinct to _brood--_ because there is something of great import happening to Derek.

 

Derej is being hunted, like his family, and he's among the last of the pack. A straggler. They're going to find him and cut him open, to deconstruct him, for no other reason than the fact that he is, in fact, a wolf.

 

So, as much as he hates what he is, Derek's wolf is doing him a _favour._ And oh, how how he resents it for helping him live when all he wants to do is die like the rest of them.

 

He won't do it now, but in a future when this is but a distant memory, Derek will thank it.

 

Because it is keeping him  _alive_.

 

 

**ii.**

Derek's feet slam against the ground, and they're bare and crunching against gravel and shavings of metal as he scrabbles up the heap of metal, desperate to get away  _get out_   _ **get out**_. He's down on all fours like some sort of animal, like some sort of  _thing_  that doesn't have the dignity to walk upright. He throws out his hands for purchase because he starts to slip, but out sprouts some black tips of metal at the end of his nails, helping him claw his way forward until his bloodied fingers hit the link of a metal fence, something  _solid_  that he can  _climb_  without effort.

So he does, and that's one step forward, but there's a thousand more to go. He hears Kate in the distance, the scratch of her laugh, the spring in her step, can almost see the cruel curve of her smile-- and he shudders, throwing the ideas aside with a snarl so strong that it shakes the metal he's clinging to, and it reverberates bright and sharp in the deadened air.

 _Too much human_ , the wolf in him decides, taking the reins effortlessly, forcing metal to curve around Derek's skin like a suit of armor. It sprouts from beneath his skin around his neck and back, coats his arms, coats his delicate human organs, a sheen of black metal gleaming under the sun. The wolf takes over processes in his adrenal cortex, flooding Derek's body with a much needed burst of adrenaline, and it's enough to get him to finish climbing the forty foot fence, to shrug off the shock of electricity coursing through his veins as the perimeter's security measures activate once he reaches the top.

It gives him time to thrust away the panic, to focus on leading them away from  **Laura**. The wolf wants him to live, but Derek  _doesn't care_  as long as she  **lives**. He takes in one sharp breath and falls, his lithe body tumbling down into the ravine below, out and into the lands outside the jurisdiction of the Beacon Hills sector, into areas unmoderated, unconnected--  _wild_ \--

Derek hates the wolf, but he knows that it's something to be utilise: he hits the ground running, and the wolf is what lets him disregard broken bones that start to knit together with each step, a cocktail of alloys taking the place of osseous tissue where it's needed.

He can still hear them, and this time it's  _Gerard's_  icy tones that penetrate the haze of instinct, that makes Derek wise and alert and sick to his stomach.

"This is pointless, Kate," Derek hears from afar, even as his body runs for him because the wolf  _won't let him stop_ , the wolf having long since taken over his cerebral cortex. "Let's get the girl."

Derek's heart stops, for a second, but the wolf fills in, passing blood through his aorta for him.

 

He never asked for this.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i've never really written teen wolf anything before, let alone srs fic at ALL before, so! ....adventure! this world is an old one that's been, like, percolating in my brain for years. 
> 
> will add more chars as they happen, sterek tagged for End Game Because All My Shipping.
> 
> all comments & crit welcome!


	2. a

**a.**

(( Derek was born with these instincts, but that doesn't make it feel any more natural to him, doesn't make it feel any less like it's something to be  _ashamed_  of. He's not Derek Hale the boy, but Derek Hale the wolf: second eldest child of the Hale family, Feed Serial Number 293354-W. Children his age shy away from him, even the  _hooligans_ leave him alone, because there's a difference between pissing your parents off and pissing off the  **Sysadmins**  that control your access to the Network.

He is not a person, but a  _thing_ , in the eyes of everyone but more importantly the law. The Hales tried to live life right. They stuck to their land, their children went to the Academy, were on their best behaviour (except when they weren't), did everything right, played all their parts, and--

It wasn't enough. Not for the Argents, Beacon Hills' own Red Team, tasked to eliminate threats to the general End User at all costs, and what else is a pack of wolves but a threat, and--

  
He closes his eyes and tastes smoke, hears the crackle of flame, his databanks whisking him years and miles away, to a darker time, to a time when a dozen Network connections go silent, to a time when Derek forgot to breathe for a solid five minutes until the wolf  _made_  him.

Derek was seventeen when they burned.

 

 

(Except for his clever uncle Peter, whose Feed has simply been burned away, leaving behind the weak flesh, an empty and shucked husk of a person. Of a wolf.)

 

He pulls himself out of his databanks, snarling, clawing at the walls of their empty house's charred remains. His instincts are natural to him, now. As natural as the oceans that have turned to sand, as natural as the colonised moon, as natural as it is to run, run,  _run_. It's natural, but it's not-- it's not  _right_. He might be quiet and unkind, but Derek's not a  _simpleton._ His life isn't the future anyone dreamed of for their child, he'd never think so low of his parents to think they'd wish such a thing upon him. But he knows that they were both wolves, changed ones, not born ones, and that they had hoped for  _change_ , for something different, for a secret life stowed away undercover, their heads stuck up in the stars.

Wolves are creatures of the ground, of the earth, and while the wolf brain melds more succesfully with a Feed than a normal mind, it's instinct. Survival. Pack. It works with him instead of against him, cooperating instead of fighting every step of the way, and in return it takes its dues. The urge to create a pack structure, to hardcode others until they, too, are compatible, to bring in intelligent Betas, subservient Omegas, nurturing Mates.

  
( ' _Tinstaafl_ ,' Laura had announced to him one day, sitting cross legged in front of him. He had peered at her, eyebrows drawn down, lips in a frown like the whole expression wasn't one Laura had seen a thousand dozen times before. ' _There's no such thing as a free lunch_ ,' she clarified, and her eyes had been sad.

She was supposed to be the next Alpha.

Derek wasn't cut out for any of this.)

 

He's twenty five now, and he hates it. ))


	3. iii

**iii.**

 

It is the year 2146, and Laura Hale is dying in a rather large puddle of her own blood.

She looks up, and there are tears shining in her hazy eyes: they are borne not from sorrow, but from pain, meted out with a steady hand. Her pupils are blown, fuzzy and unfocused, and the lights in them have long since gone dark. The bones in her ribcage have been shattered but already they're shifting back into place, the bones moving with an audible snap crackle  **pop**.

Undignified, Laura gives a struggling wheeze with every breath, and she can hear her ribcage rattling in her chest, creaking where her lungs rub up against metal coated bones.

Everything hurts, but she's almost past the point where it even _matters_. The wolf in her is strung out, overworked from repeatively healing the broken things inside her (a careful knife slowly slices away at her, knowing that she will be repaired soon, a blade of silver dragging along her organs, piercing them, cutting them, her chest cut open and _exposed_ \--) 

Derek has always been the one with the mind for biology, so she doesn't know what her body is doing. She can't recite the organs that are misbehaving, can't tell what it is in her that is failing, because it feels like _everything_ is. 

"Oh, sweet, sweet Laura," the voice above her says, its tone cold and dark, interrupting her thoughts with a silven tongue. " _Darling_ Laura."

The words drip with sickly sweet false intentions. A finger strokes her cheek, and her breath hitches again as she tries to turn away, the touch on her skin feeling like curdled milk does on the tongue.

"Don't," is all she says, her voice nothing but vitriol and bitterness, and it's as forceful as she can make it but it's still _not enough_ , because Laura knows that she sounds weak, can hear her own heart _racing_ that gives it all away.

The touch does not relent, and instead, it slips up to her ratty, gore-coated hair, yanking it forward with the full force of an adult male. He forces her head into a bowed position, and Laura and her wolf alike howl with the searing pain of it all before she can get a hold of it-- before she can bite down on her tongue and almost bite it clean off with her fangs, gnashing in rage at her attacker-- 

Laura tries to compose herself, and as she's failing, she's forced to listen to the dark chuckle that comes from above. 

 

(Her and Derek had left, after the Argents had won the first time. Had taken together their few possessions and hopped Sectors, had pooled together all their credits and left for somewhere their parents would have liked had they not been freshly buried. Somewhere _away,_ away from the hollow eyes of Peter, who stared at them unblinking from his hospital bed, mind ravaged by madness on a good day and paralysed on a bad.

The Argents, when they'd found him, had ripped his Feed clean out of his skull.

It would have been kinder to kill him.

A wolf without their Feed is more than neutered, they're non-functional halfwits, possessed by the madness of being incomplete, and once a Feed is gone for an extended period of time--

It wasn't kind of them to abandon Peter, and Derek had been reluctant. But Laura insisted it was what he would have wanted, but.

 

Well.

 

She was wrong.)

 

"Now," the voice says, still saccharine sweet. "You won't feel a thing." There's a cut of metal against her neck, and she feels the skin and muscle and nerves give way, and whatever it is, it's coated in something terrible that stings like Laura's never felt before.

The wolf whines as it tries to repair the damage, unable to do it, howling in her head in sorrow. She is hurting, and it cannot help. The man above parts the flesh at the base of her neck, and Laura screams in agony, screams and doesn't stop, because the wires connecting her fucking **brain** to her **Feed** are exposed. The wires that connect her to her _wolf_.

"No," she breathes, "no, no, no, **no** \--"

Laura bucks against the restraints, claws extending, teeth sharpening, face changing from that of a girl to that of a beast. There is no tremble in her lower lip, because Hales are strong, and it's a mantra in her head as she struggles to wrap her mouth around the word she needs to say.

"He's coming," is all she can growl as metal cuts away at metal, as her metallic augments start to flake away from her skin, piece by piece, and--

 

Peter smiles at her, his smile bright, his eyes dull and faraway.

  
"Oh, Laura."   
  
He cuts the final wire, and with it a few veins, not caring that she'll bleed out on the floor of this cement room, chained up and broken.

 

"I'm planning on it."


	4. iv

**iv.**

It's been eight years since Derek's family burned to death, and two weeks since Laura joined them. He's here, now, in the charred remains of the house, sitting in the dark and struggling to breathe. Because it aches, and oh, how it aches.

They are gone, and so is she. The loss of his family has been a pressure in his chest, slowly loosened by time and precarious healing, but the Laura shaped hole in his life is ragged and new and.

Derek breathes, calm and resolute, because they are dead and he is not, and that means he can avenge them, if he can just figure out how to get ahead. Derek flexes a hand, lip curled back, and a weak ripple exudes from his Feed, a thin sheet of metal creeping over his face, dark grey and.

She had been the Alpha, and she had died here, on what used to be their land. The Argents had killed her, ruthless and cruel in every way, and there aren't even any pieces left to pick up. He'd felt her go link dead, from one Feed to another, but the Alpha Protocol still hasn't started in his mind, and Derek's stuck trying to figure out why, why, why.

He stalks the house, keeping to the shadows in case there's someone watching, but the Hale house is in the middle of a condemned block, surrounded by abandoned buildings and.

Derek pulls at his hair, claws at his skin, and mourns again, because the first two dozen times weren't enough, won't ever be enough, and.

The sounds of intruders float into his ears like an unwanted orchestra, voices accompanied by feet climbing over rubble and laughter and heartbeats, two of them, and one smells of cinnamon and another of smoke.

The wolf in him comes online, the HUD in his eyes flickering to life, scoping out their heat signature in the distance. Two beacons, shining in the dark, and Derek hears them say "dead body" and "murder" and it sets him alight. Because even though he had felt Laura's connection abruptly cut out, he'd never found the body.

And oh, how he'd looked.

He creeps along, feet treading lightly amongst the concrete and wires, silently creeping towards the duo, who were attempting to be quiet but without any on how to do it. One of them is dressed in red, eyes that catch the moonlight and glint amber. The other is in green and brown. Their hearts are out of time, in asynchronous rhythm, but both of them are excited.

"Dude," is all one of them breathes, running a hand through his hair. "Are you sure?"

"Absolutely, Scott. The Feed's been clean ripped out."

Derek recoils, nails elongating.

"Gross!" The figure in green shivers, like he's just imagined what it would feel like. It'd be unpleasant for a human, but they'd live. A Feed was a device, a tool that's useful but it's not an extension of their soul, of their body, like it is for a Wolf.

"Do you think that maybe, it was a...You know. One of them?"

A scoff.

"No way, dude. Just because severing the Feed connection is the best way to kill a Wolf doesn't mean this girl was one."

They stop, and both of them sort of shudder. The grave is half dug up, and the stench of the carcass is overwhelming, even from so far away. The one in red doesn't cover his face up, since he was prepared enough to shut down his olfactory senses, but the other isn't so bright and shirks away with a shudder.

Derek wants to decapitate them both, just so he can go and lay Laura's corpse to rest.

Blinded by his own failings, he turns tail and runs, not caring if they hear his hasty retreat into the concrete jungle. In the process of fleeing and wallowing in his own disgust, Derek doesn't hear the intruder encroaching upon the hapless duo.

By the time he stops running, Derek's too far away to hear the screams.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> :| i am the slowest. we're crunching at work, now, so i inch alongggg


End file.
